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Written Question
Free School Meals: Eligibility
Friday 15th March 2024

Asked by: Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench - Life peer)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government what guidance they have provided, if any, to local authorities about using data proactively to identify and register all eligible children for free school meal entitlement.

Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)

Maximising the take-up of free school meals is important in ensuring that as many eligible children as possible benefit from a healthy and nutritious meal. The department aims to make it as simple as possible for schools and local authorities to determine eligibility.

To support this, an ‘Eligibility Checking System’ has been provided to make the checking process as quick and straightforward as possible for schools and local authorities.

The department has looked at this issue and considers there to be merit in local authorities exploring initiatives to maximise take up and to better understand the barriers that prevent such take up, whilst ensuring adherence to legal and data protection constraints. The department has not provided formal guidance to support these activities but continues to engage with key stakeholder on this issue.


Written Question
Free School Meals: Eligibility
Friday 15th March 2024

Asked by: Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench - Life peer)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the potential merits of local authorities using data proactively to identify and register children eligible for free school meals.

Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)

Maximising the take-up of free school meals is important in ensuring that as many eligible children as possible benefit from a healthy and nutritious meal. The department aims to make it as simple as possible for schools and local authorities to determine eligibility.

To support this, an ‘Eligibility Checking System’ has been provided to make the checking process as quick and straightforward as possible for schools and local authorities.

The department has looked at this issue and considers there to be merit in local authorities exploring initiatives to maximise take up and to better understand the barriers that prevent such take up, whilst ensuring adherence to legal and data protection constraints. The department has not provided formal guidance to support these activities but continues to engage with key stakeholder on this issue.


Written Question
Free School Meals: Pre-school Education
Monday 18th December 2023

Asked by: Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench - Life peer)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government what estimate they have made of the additional expenditure that would be incurred if free school meals were to be provided to all registered pupils at maintained nursery schools in England as well as to children in receipt of relevant funded early years education.

Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)

Over 2 million pupils are currently eligible for benefits-related free school meals (FSM). This includes pupils attending a local authority maintained, academy or free school nursery, as long as they are either in full-time education or receive education both before and after lunch and meet the benefits-related FSM eligibility criteria.

Additionally, close to 1.3 million infants receive free and nutritious meals under the universal infant FSM policy (UIFSM).

The department does not currently have plans to change the existing eligibility conditions for FSM or UIFSM. As such, the department has not made an estimate of the associated costs of providing FSM to all registered pupils at maintained nursery schools in England as well as to children in receipt of relevant funded early years education. The department continues to keep eligibility of FSM under review.


Written Question
Pupils: Sexual Offences
Thursday 25th March 2021

Asked by: Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench - Life peer)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps a school is legally obliged to take in response to an accusation of sexual assault being made by one pupil against another.

Answered by Baroness Berridge

Keeping children safe in education’ (KCSIE) is statutory guidance to which all schools and colleges must have regard to when carrying out their duties to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. This guidance is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/keeping-children-safe-in-education--2.

Part 1 of KCSIE, which all staff should receive at induction, sets out what peer on peer abuse looks like, with detailed information covering child on child sexual violence and sexual harassment for staff who work directly with children. All staff should receive appropriate safeguarding and child protection training which is regularly updated.

Part 5 of KCSIE sets out how schools and colleges should respond to reports of child-on-child sexual violence and sexual harassment.

We also provide detailed advice to support schools and colleges to understand what sexual violence and sexual harassment between children in schools and colleges looks like, how to prevent it, how to respond to reports of it, and on how to support victims. This advice is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/sexual-violence-and-sexual-harassment-between-children-in-schools-and-colleges.

The guidance is very clear that all school staff should know what to do if a child tells them they are being abused or neglected.

The guidance is also very clear that concerns about a child should be responded to immediately and referrals (generally led by the designated safeguarding lead) made to children’s social care and the police.


Written Question
Food Technology
Wednesday 27th January 2021

Asked by: Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench - Life peer)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what is their policy on cooking, nutrition and food education in schools.

Answered by Baroness Berridge

All schools are required to teach a balanced and broad curriculum that helps provide young people with the knowledge, skills and understanding to prepare them to play a full and active part in society.

The National Curriculum for Design and Technology (D&T) requires maintained schools to teach pupils about food, nutrition, how to cook and healthy eating. Cooking and nutrition is a discrete strand of the D&T curriculum and cooking is compulsory in maintained schools for key stages 1 to 3 (ages 5-14). The curriculum aims to teach children how to cook, with an emphasis on savoury dishes, and how to apply the principles of healthy eating and nutrition. In 2016, we also introduced a new food preparation and nutrition GCSE to provide pupils with practical cookery experience and teach them about the underlying scientific concepts of nutrition and healthy eating.

The importance of a healthy diet is also included in the science curriculum for both primary and secondary schools where healthy eating is covered through topics relating to nutrition and digestion, including the content of a healthy diet and the impact of diet on how the body functions.


Written Question
Special Educational Needs
Wednesday 13th January 2021

Asked by: Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench - Life peer)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how many children have been registered as having special educational needs each year since 1991; and what assessment they have made of those numbers.

Answered by Baroness Berridge

Data is available on the number of children with special educational needs in schools in England since 1992.

All the publications since 2010 can be found via the following website: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-special-educational-needs-sen.

Earlier publications can be found in the national archives at: https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20130103143954/https://education.gov.uk/researchandstatistics/statistics/statistics-by-topic/schoolpupilcharacteristics/sen?page=1.

The attached table gives the available time series compiled from the figures in these publications. The notes below the table explain points where policy changes have affected the continuity of the time series.


Written Question
Special Educational Needs
Friday 11th December 2020

Asked by: Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench - Life peer)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what estimate they have made of the numbers of children registered as having special educational needs in each year since that term was first used to the most recent date for which such data are available; and what plans they have to publish those data in tabular form.

Answered by Baroness Berridge

The special educational needs (SEN) system was substantially reformed in 2014. One of the features of this was that there was a wider age range than before, meaning higher SEN numbers amongst children. Children can either receive support in schools (known as SEN support) or those with more complex needs are issued with an Education, Health and Care (EHC) plan.

The department collects and publishes data on the numbers of pupils with SEN support and of children and young people aged 0-25 with EHC plans from 2015 (and the forerunner to EHC plans, constituting statements of SEN, which were phased out between 2015 and 2018).

Data shows that in the academic year 2015/16, 991,981 pupils were on SEN Support; in the academic year 2019/20 this was 1,079,000, and in 2015, 240,183 children and young people aged 0-25 had EHC plans (combined with statements); in 2020, there were 390,109 EHC plans.

Further data on pupils in schools with SEN (EHC plans and SEN support) can be found at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/special-educational-needs-in-england.

Data on all children and young people aged 0-25 with an EHC plan can be found at https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/education-health-and-care-plans.

The releases contain tables with key figures, and a table tool allowing users to create their own tables by selecting options from the filters available. Information on pupils in schools with SEN is expected to be updated in July 2021 with data for the 2020/21 academic year, and information on EHC plans in May 2021.


Written Question
Holiday Activities and Food Research Fund
Wednesday 30th October 2019

Asked by: Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench - Life peer)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will extend the Holiday Activities and Food programme to cover school holidays in 2020.

Answered by Nick Gibb

The Holiday Activities and Food Programme will run again in 2020. The Department for Education has published an invitation to bid which closes on 13 December 2019. Further information is available here: https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/2cd0c5d3-e34f-4040-b0c9-17188231346b.


Written Question
National Vocational Qualifications
Friday 4th October 2019

Asked by: Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench - Life peer)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, for what reasons his Department's plans to publish Progress 8 data do not include key data on BTEC Level 2 qualifications; and if he will make a statement.

Answered by Nick Gibb

The Government has not changed its policy in this area. The Department can confirm that those BTEC Level 2 qualifications which are on the Key Stage 4 approved list of qualifications will be included in the 2019 provisional Key Stage 4 data scheduled to be published on 17 October 2019.


Written Question
Foster Care: Care Leavers
Friday 6th September 2019

Asked by: Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench - Life peer)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate has he made of the number of care leavers required to claim universal credit to subsidise their staying put placement.

Answered by Kemi Badenoch - President of the Board of Trade

​Since its introduction in May 2014, the department has provided new burdens funding each year to local authorities to implement ‘Staying Put’, as set out in the table below:

Financial year

Amount of funding given to local authorities to implement ‘Staying Put’

2014-15

£7.4 million

2015-16

£14.8 million

2016-17

£22.2 million

2017-18

£22.85 million

2018-19

£23.3 million

2019-20

£23.77 million

Total

£114.32 million

Decisions on funding beyond March 2020 will be subject to the department’s Spending Review settlement.

Funding for each Staying Put arrangement - including whether the young person should contribute to the cost of the placement through income they receive from earnings or benefits - is agreed on a case-by-case basis and is not reported to the department. Consequently, the information requested on whether young people are required to claim benefits to subsidise the Staying Put arrangement is not available.